hanging upside down from the rafters

My brain hurts

One of the mantras of creative writing teachers is: ‘Show, don’t tell’. Yeah yeah yeah, I thought to myself, the fourth or fifth time I heard it. Bored now.

But then I did an exercise that demonstrated the principle. I can’t even remember what the exercise was, but it would have been something along the lines of describing a person’s character and then rewriting the description as an active scene that showed the character.

So this:

Steven was a cold fish. He never let on how he was feeling, and he was impervious to other people’s emotional state.

might become:

Steven’s wife had to ask him whether he was happy that she was pregnant. ‘Of course I am,’ he said, ‘but I’m not going to celebrate till it’s born. You might lose it.’

That little snippet of action shows us exactly how Steven behaves, and really makes us feel the effect he has on the people around him.

Thus the mantra became meta. I had been told to show not tell several times, but only once I’d been shown the principle in action did I fully understand the power of showing. And all that meta stuff makes my brain hurt…

Experiment update

I’m missing my escapist fiction like you wouldn’t believe. I have read half of an editing book and half of a screenwriting book and a couple of graphic novels (Watchmen is BRILLIANT!) since last week. I find it difficult to switch my head off at night – even though I’m enjoying what I read, it tends to swirl around my mind exciting all those little neurones that ought to be dozing. Still, I’m learning lots of stuff.